Optical Networking Best Practices Handbook

13.1. OPTICAL WIRELESS NETWORKING HIGH-SPEED INTEGRATED TRANSCEIVERS

Optical wireless local area networks (LANs) have the potential to provide bandwidths far in excess of those available with current or planned RF networks. There are several approaches to implementing optical wireless systems, but these usually involve the integration of optical, optoelectronic, and electrical components to create transceivers. Such systems are necessarily complex, and the widespread use of optical wireless is likely to be dependent on the ability to fabricate the required transceiver components at low cost. A number of universities in the United Kingdom are currently involved in a project to demonstrate integrated optical wireless subsystems that can provide line-of-sight in-building communications at 155 Mbps and above [2]. The system uses two-dimensional (2-D) arrays of novel microcavity light-emitting diodes (LEDs) and arrays of detectors integrated with custom complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) integrated circuits (ICs) to implement tracking transceiver components. In this section, basic approaches used for inbuilt optical wireless communication and the need for an integrated and scalable approach to the fabrication of transceivers are discussed. The work here aims to implement these; experimental results and potential future directions are then discussed [2].

The provision of voice, data, and visual communications to mobile users has become a key area of research and product ...